Cerebral Palsy and It Affects On Children

Cerebral palsy affects a child’s brain when they’re simply one month old. You may think that it’s just one disorder, but in reality, it’s many disorders all under one name. CP affects muscle tone, movement and/or posture as well as sight and hearing. It also causes oral diseases, seizures, and urinary continence. All of this affects people’s daily activities. (Mayo Clinic) People with CP suffer from all of these which causes them and their families a lot of pain. The most common type of CP is Spastic CP. “People with spastic CP have increased muscle tone. This means their muscles are stiff and, as a result, their movements can be awkward.” (CDC) That’s why when kids or adults move awkwardly, it’s because of their increased muscle tone. The first person to discover CP in 1853 was Dr. John Little. He suffered a long childhood with multiple illnesses and he decided to inform families and society about what he’s been through to help out children who went through the same thing he did. (Pierrette Mimi Poinsett, M.D. at Cerebral Palsy Guidance)

This helped the families of young ones and adults understand what CP is. Little did many important things/contributions in his life and one of the biggest ones was delivering a series of published lectures entitled ‘On the Nature and Treatment of the Deformities of the Human Frame’ which he delivered at England’s Royal Orthopaedic Hospital in 1843.

Most kids and adults with CP have trouble with their everyday activities as stated before. Some people have trouble doing schoolwork or even eating due to muscle tone and their movement. That’s when eye-tracking devices and others come in to help. Eye-tracking devices are used to help people with these types of conditions. These devices track the movement of the pupil which moves the mouse on the screen and “the person selects items either by holding their eye-gaze for a certain time, referred to as ‘dwell’, by blinking, or by clicking an external button.” (Cerebral Palsy Alliance) This type of device is very helpful as the person who is using it doesn’t need to use any type of force or movement with their body to do work and/or any type of activity.

There are two options that a person can choose. They can choose to use the eye-tracking mechanism by itself or they can choose to use the eye-tracking mechanism and the voice-activated version. For example, they can use talk-to-type as well as move their eyes to select a certain button that they can’t do with the voice operator. Therefore, they won’t need to move any other part of their body to do work. This project will need certain tools for it work. It will need motion sensors for the eye-tracking as well as a system that will recognize the person’s voice automatically when it says a certain phrase.